land evaluation

When you take the first step toward building your dream home, your journey typically begins with the search for the right piece of land.


One common assumption that people make while searching is that they can build their dream home on any land, as long as it’s for sale as a lot. Unfortunately, this is not correct, and the wrong land purchase can end up causing quite a few problems.


While General Construction & Development has built its reputation of excellence on residential building projects, our land development services are critical to the success of your dream home.


There are many factors that can affect not only whether a lot is buildable, but whether the lot is the right choice for your particular homebuilding needs. We have had clients in the past come to us and say, “I have this beautiful lot, and I want you to build my dream home there.” Unfortunately, there are times when the lot they have chosen even though it was beautiful, they couldn’t put the exact house they wanted on the lot.


Obviously, we want to help you to avoid making the wrong land investment. The earlier you can bring us in on the process of finding your desired land, the better. We enjoy evaluating land and potential teardown opportunities so you can build your dream home. We can also provide sitework estimates based on the lot or teardown that we are evaluating.


A few of the areas we will look at…


LAND EVALUATION

When you take the first step toward building your dream home, your journey typically begins with the search for the right piece of land.



One common assumption that people make while searching is that they can build their dream home on any land, as long as it’s for sale as a lot. Unfortunately, this is not correct, and the wrong land purchase can end up causing quite a few problems. While General Construction & Development has built its reputation of excellence on residential building projects, our land development services are critical to the success of your dream home.

There are many factors that can affect not only whether a lot is buildable, but whether the lot is the right choice for your particular homebuilding needs. We have had clients in the past come to us and say, “I have this beautiful lot, and I want you to build my dream home there.” Unfortunately, there are times when the lot they have chosen even though it was beautiful, they couldn’t put the exact house they wanted on the lot.



Obviously, we want to help you to avoid making the wrong land investment. The earlier you can bring us in on the process of finding your desired land, the better. We enjoy evaluating land and potential teardown opportunities so you can build your dream home. We can also provide sitework estimates based on the lot or teardown that we are evaluating.

A few of the areas we will look at…

Zoning Requirements

Zoning can vary from one municipality to the next. Navigating the code can be a daunting task. We can assist in navigating the code requirements in the jurisdictiojn in which your home will be built. Some important considerations include, the limitations on the size of home for your parcel, or what the floor-area ratio must be, There also setback requirments that dictate how far your proposed home needs to be from the edge of the property line.

Utilities

Checking out utility availability can also make a big difference later on, especially since some utility options can be more expensive than others in the long run. Depending on the location your water will come for city water or well water. If your property requires a well, we can look at surrounding wells to find out the availability quantity and water.


We can help determine the costs involved if your home will be connected to city sewer or will require a septic system. Septic systems work great but typically cost much more than tying into city sewer. 


When it comes to wired utilities, we will evaluate electrical, cable and telephone lines coming into your home. We can help determine if they can be underground or if they have to be overhead and the costs involved to connect to them.


Drainage

The last thing anyone wants is a flooded basement or a muddy puddle in your yard as large as a pond. This can become a major issue if land contours aren’t considered at your potential building site.

We will help ensure the topography of your land slopes away from where the house will be placed so rainwater can drain in the right direction.

We also will look at your soil’s water table and what the percolation rate is, which is how fast the soil can absorb water. 


We help evaluate the possibility of using a gravity footing drain or a sump pump to aid with drainage. Ideally, we want gravity fed drainage systems.


In short, drainage is such a critical component to think about before you buy any lot. We are happy to evaluate the best drainage scenario for your desired lot.


Estimating Site Work

Choosing the wrong plot of land can suddenly turn an affordable dream home into a money pit. To avoid that from happening, we can help you estimate what sitework will cost on a particular lot. For example, we will look at:


  • “How much will it cost to dig and backfill the house? 
  • "Removing trees and natural debris?"
  • "How does the property drain?"

Those are just a few of the things we look at.


Estimating building costs isn’t an exact science, but turning to a properly experienced builder like General Construction & Development can make a  difference. We can give you hard numbers on what it will cost to build from the concrete up, but we can’t do that with building costs related to the land. We don’t know exactly what we’ll find, until after we start digging. With land, those numbers can’t be fully set in stone. However, we can still provide fairly reliable estimates when it comes to the sitework budget. Most often, we are able to keep our clients within their budget range.



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